Dark the Night Descending (The Paderborn Chronicles Book 1)

by Jennifer Bresnick

  As he dove into a crowd on one of the main thoroughfares, hoping to lose any pursuers in the bustling street, he wondered if he was just being a coward. That was a stupid question. Of course he was. But in the absence of luck, sometimes cowardice was a good substitute.

  “This way,” he told Faidal as the smell of the salt in the air grew stronger. He turned down a side street, and then another, glancing back over his shoulder to see if his companion was still behind him – and if anyone else was following in their wake.

  After darting through a maze of quiet lanes and back alleyways for a good ten minutes, he came to a door set into a plain brick wall. It was the kind of door that looked like it had been boarded up and forgotten by the people on the other side: there was no handle, and nothing to indicate that it was still in use, but Arran knocked anyway, tapping out a pattern he hoped was still in the rotation of pass codes.

  Arran had never been able to figure out how the people behind the door figured out who was knocking before they opened it, but they always seemed to. He murmured an immensely relieved prayer at the sound of the locks being undone, motioning for Faidal to stand back as the door swung open into the street.

  An old woman scowled at him from over the top of her spectacles for a moment, and he smiled at her brightly. “Good morning, Mrs. Lanning. Is your husband in, by any chance?”

  “Who’s this?” she said, glancing at Faidal, her voice raspy and low from decades of smoking tobacco.

  “He’s just a friend, and he’s going to stay outside.”

  Mrs. Lanning nodded. “Good boy. Come in.”

  “Just stand here and look like you know what you’re doing,” he whispered to Faidal.

  “What is this place?”

  “My bank. You want a ticket out of here, then you better stay put, do you hear me?”

  Faidal put up his hands. “I’m not going nowhere. You can’t get rid of me that easy.”

  “Good. I’ll be out in twenty minutes.”

  Arran saw Faidal lean against the wall, crossing his arms, before the door closed and he turned his attention to the interior. The entry room was warm and cozy. The decorations were old fashioned, and didn’t seem to have changed much since Mrs. Lanning’s far-off youth, but it was a perfectly nice little parlor. The building itself had been some kind of old warehouse in its prime, but Lanning and his wife had taken it over nearly half a century ago, as both a residence and a discreet center for their business, which ranged from private banking to money lending to the fencing of stolen property, all for a fee that would have set them up in a red iron mansion if they had wished it.

  Arran had been a faithful customer for years. Rather astonishingly, given his recent record, he had always been able to pay his dues and keep on the couple’s good side, such as it was. Sometimes he even thought that they liked him.

  “How’s the little lad, Mrs. Lanning?” he asked. “Your daughter getting him under control these days?”

  “He’s off at school already,” she replied, leading him through the parlor and towards her husband’s office. “Good thing, too, cause she got two more on the way. Twins in her belly, by all the gods, and her bastard of a husband run off again to the bloody Isles. What a disaster.”

  “Twins are good luck,” he said, not wishing to comment on her daughter’s marital choices.

  Mrs. Lanning snorted at him and stabbed her finger at a chair. “Wait here.”

  Arran sat quietly for a while, looking at his hands and trying to catch his breath a bit. He hoped the Guild inspector would leave his mother alone. Perhaps he could get Lanning to send a note to Durville, asking him to check on her. That would have to do.

  “What can I do you for, my good sir?” Lanning said as he entered the room. He was a slight person, tall but with spindly limbs and a balding head surrounded by an untamed nimbus of frizzy white hair that made him look like a snow festival effigy. There was something wrong with his heart, these days, that made him wheeze as he walked, and he was constantly mopping his sweating face with a kerchief, but his mind was as sharp as it ever had been.

  “I just need to make a withdrawal, Mister Lanning,” Arran said, standing to greet him. “A rather speedy one.”

  “Off to foreign shores again, are we?”

  “Yes, sir. Two thousand ought to cover it.”

  Lanning raised his eyebrows. “That’s an awful lot of pocket change for you.”

  “I might be gone for a while.”

  “Got the Guild on your back, I hear. Might be gone forever if you know what’s good for you.”

  “How did you know that?”

  Lanning just gave him a look. “You can only have your money if you stop asking stupid questions.”

  “Yes, sir.” It wasn’t uncommon for Lanning to know what his clients intended to eat for breakfast before the meal had even finished cooking. “Do you know anyone going to Ravenaught?”

  “Ravenaught, is it? Or Niheba?”

  “How did you –”

  “Please,” the old man scoffed. “I can spot a sea demon from a mile away. They’re shifty, but they pay regular. What’s she after?”

  “A free ride.”

  “And you’re going to give it to her?”

  “Her?”

  “Him. Whichever. Looks like one I used to know. Played a girl for a while, but I guess they can be what they want.”

  “Right. I was supposed to take him for a spin, but my ship ain’t floating at the moment. Our plans got moved up a little bit.”

  “That they did,” Lanning chuckled, but he pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something on one corner before tearing it off and handing it over. “One hour till they shove off. Think that’ll do?”

  “It’ll do splendidly. Thank you ever so much, sir. And why don’t we make that withdrawal twenty-three hundred, yes? Of course, I won’t have room to carry all of that. You should probably keep some of it.”

  “Sounds fair enough. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Arran emerged feeling a lot more than three hundred pounds lighter. The donation was worth the information Lanning had given him: the name of a licensed ship heading to Ravenaught, and probably to the neneckt island afterward. It would save a great deal of time and trouble trying to find a friendly captain to take him aboard, and time was not something he had a lot of.

  But there was a much more pressing problem facing him once he stepped into the alleyway. Faidal was gone.

  “Hey,” he whispered hoarsely, trying to shout without making too much of a sound. “Where did you get to?”

  It was a pointless exercise, since there was nowhere to hide. Arran looked down both ends of the road and around the corners with no sign of the neneckt, and started to panic a little.

  Maybe he should just leave. The ship would be departing soon, and he didn’t want to miss it. He had his own skin to think about. It was unlikely that the Guild would catch up with him on the open water, in any case. Most of the ships they owned were big, slow transports to carry tons of metal from the mines to the markets. They relied on their omnipresence on shore to keep order, and didn’t try to stop people on the sea with quick little frigates like the King’s fleet did.

  Ravenaught was an excellent place to disappear from the Guild, but it was far from the path he had taken from Cantrid to the capital, and his pendant could be lying somewhere on the sea floor hundreds of miles away from the frontier city. He might not need Faidal to explain himself to the inspector, but going to ground in Ravenaught wouldn’t help him with his obligation to the eallawif.

  “Ready?” Faidal said into his ear just as he was about to take off for the docks, and he was so surprised that he nearly swung around and hit the man in the face.

  “For pity’s sake. Where were you?”

  Faidal held up a pair of leather sacks he was carrying. “Thought we might need a few things,” he said.

  “You told me you didn’t have any money,” Arran replied, looking inside to find a few clean shirts, a
shaving kit, and a smaller canvas bag filled with the other basic odds and ends that travelers needed. It was a standard set sold by nearly all the merchants in the harbor quarter, offered to recently pressed sailors fresh from the prison cells and those who suddenly decided that a life on land no longer suited them. While it was an inexpensive purchase, it certainly wasn’t free.

  “Not enough for a ticket anywhere, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make some sort of contribution.”

  “Thank you,” Arran said, shouldering the bag. “I’ve got us a ship. Leaves any minute now, so we better get moving.”

  “Lead on.”

  “I figure I’ll buy you passage, but I’ll probably just work my way,” Arran said as they walked, keeping a careful eye out for anyone who might be following them.

  “I can work, too.”

  “Do you know how?”

  “It can’t be that hard, can it?”

  “It’s hard if you’re not used to it. And besides, the captain might not really want you touching his sails. I’ll probably have to slip him something extra just to soothe his nerves. You might as well take your leisure if I’m paying for it.”

  “Your people are always so superstitious.”

  “Your people give us good reason to be.”

  Faidal smiled. “And yet you trust me.”

  “Trust? No. I don’t. I’m just keeping my tools where I can see ‘em.”

  “And a wise thing, too. Lose sight of something on the sea and it’s gone forever.”

  “I’m hoping not.”

  “Well. Perhaps you, of all people, should be careful what you wish for.”

  Arran glanced at his face, but Faidal was still smiling. He was always doing that.

  He soon turned his attention back to his surroundings, however, as the close clutter of shops and storehouses broke open to reveal the very rim of the ocean, collared and calmed by the workings of the harbor. He took the scrap of paper out of his pocket and looked at it again. The Celia, it said. Captain Normen Bomont.

  Arran didn’t recognize the name, nor did he know the ship. It was probably a horrible slug, he thought as he scanned the boards that organized departing vessels by their destination. Long-haul merchants usually were, since safety and stability were much more important than speed. Would he have enough time for Faidal to conduct his business, leave Niheba, and dredge the Bay of Burlera for his necklace before his month had passed? It would be cutting it very, very close if the Celia was anything other than a snapper. A slovenly trade tub trailing seaweed half a mile behind her would signal his doom as surely as a knife to his throat.

  “There,” Faidal said, nodding towards one of the quays. Arran turned to look.

  “No, that can’t be. Lanning said it was a trade ship.”

  “The name is painted right there, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but –” Arran looked down at the paper again. He hadn’t read it wrong. But the ship he was staring at was an enlisted fleet cutter, a stripe of brilliant gold leaf down its perfectly painted side. There were men in the King’s uniform pacing the deck and up in the rigging, and a knot of officers with their ridiculous hats wobbling high above their heads standing near the stern.

  “This isn’t right,” he said.

  “I can’t think of anything better,” Faidal replied. “Let’s go.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “What? The Guild and the King’s fleet partner all the time. I’ll have a word, and everything will be fine.”

  “That’s very nice and all, but you’re not really a member of the Guild,” Arran accused. “Are you?”

  “Why do you say that? Because I didn’t want to get into an argument with the woman?”

  “Partly, yes. And because Guild inspectors don’t sit in prison. Thieves do. You stole that card.”

  “Maybe I wanted to be there,” Faidal countered.

  “Why?”

  “To get free passage off a captain in need of a little help.”

  “You didn’t know I was going to be there.”

  “Happens more regularly than you might think. And it worked, didn’t it? It’ll work again,” Faidal said. “Trust me.”

  “You lied to me! A lot!”

  “Only so I could help you.”

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  “Is it? Would you rather be back in the cells right now? Or drained dry by the Siheldi that night? I could easily put you in your grave if that’s what you’re after.”

  “Of course not,” Arran said. “But this is ridiculous.”

  “Yes. But unless you want to explain it to her,” Faidal said, nodding towards the glossy black carriage heading down the avenue towards the dockyard, “I suggest we save our outrage for later.”

  “God damn it. Now we’re going to lie to the King’s man on top of everything else. That’s just great. Is there anyone we’ve missed? Can we make some babies cry just to feel like we’ve been truly thorough?”

  “A King’s man is no different than any other,” Faidal scoffed. “Just keep your mouth shut and let me handle this.”

  Arran did shut his mouth, but it was only so he could grind his teeth together as he followed Faidal. He knew it was a little hypocritical of him to take such issue with thieving and lying – he had participated in both more times than he could easily recall – but he didn’t like being the victim of it. Or at least the object of it, he corrected himself. He wasn’t losing anything except some time to Faidal. Yet.

  Still, he was pretty good at it, Arran had to admit as he watched Faidal plaster that grin on his face as he approached a bored-looking officer overseeing the men stowing the last of the supplies. He presented his card with a little flourish, and the young man pointed towards the captain with a tip of his hat.

  “Come on,” Faidal beckoned, and Arran followed him with a respectful nod towards the officer. It couldn’t hurt to be nice.

  “Good morning, Captain Bomont –” Faidal started, but the man he was addressing cut him off.

  “No. We don’t take your sort.”

  “But sir –”

  “Did you not understand me, you heathen devil? I saw you skulking around the quay, setting your sights on me before you even came aboard. Get off my ship.”

  Faidal turned to Arran for help. Bomont was the short and stocky type, as brown as a walnut and twice as tough. He had clearly been at sea since before Arran had learned to chew his supper, and the glower from underneath his bushy grey eyebrows did not give much indication that he was a man capable of changing his mind.

  “Mister Lanning sends his highest regards, Captain,” Arran tried, which only made Bomont frown further. “He personally assured me that you would be amenable to taking some very generous passengers on your journey. He particularly praised your strong sensibility in extending courtesy to other men of the sea. I own a ship in my own right, and I would be more than happy to take on any role that might be helpful to you.”

  Bomont looked him up and down for a moment, and didn’t seem all too impressed with what he saw. “Have yourself a nice little fishing tub, do you?” he asked, making the other officers laugh. “Got it from your old Pa?”

  “No, sir,” Arran said, trying to remain pleasant and friendly, but changing his tone a bit. He wondered how his face looked. “Don’t much like the stink. Done a bit of smuggling, though. Never been caught. Some fightin’ too. Got this one on my back and paying hell for it,” he added, jerking his thumb at Faidal, “and I’m just about as keen to be on a King’s ship as you are to have me. But I can pay you well, I got Lanning’s blessing, and I will be leaving this godforsaken hellhole in the next hour whether you take my gold or someone else does. It’s up to you, sir.”

  Bomont looked at his lieutenant with disbelief. Arran knew full well that he was not accustomed to taking such lip from lesser men, and he was counting on the captain’s inability to let his belligerent hubris go by unchecked. King’s men lived and breathed discipline, and they made sure that everyone inside an
d outside of the Royal Navy knew it.

  “Third watch,” Bomont snapped. “And you’ll pay for the privilege. You put one foot wrong and so help me God, you will not leave this ship with an inch of skin left on your back. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “As for this,” he said, pointing at Faidal, “it will give me its word of binding. It will then stay in a locked room, and you will be responsible for its conduct. Any argument and the deal is off.”

  “That will not be a problem, sir,” Faidal said smoothly.

  “Say it to me.”

  “You have my word of binding. I will not harm this ship nor a person on it. If it is in my power to bring you fair weather, I pledge to do so.”

  “Very well. Mister Lanning’s blessing, indeed,” the captain muttered into his beard as Arran counted coins into his hand. “What a damn dirty trick.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Megrithe had let out a string of very unladylike curses when she saw the Celia slipping its moorings and disappearing into the heavy traffic that clogged the harbor. She had wasted more than half an hour on that slippery bastard’s mother, who had been nothing but tediously obtuse.

  Megrithe couldn’t tell if Elspeth had been artfully trying to stonewall her or if she really just was that insipid, but eventually the litany of staunch denials peppered with prayers and injunctions against her inquisitor’s demonic ways had tired her out. She had left the woman with a constable to make sure she didn’t try to warn her son of anything, and took Godefroy’s advice to check the docks again in case the pair tried to flee the city entirely.

  She had been so close, but by the time she found a reliable witness, he had pointed to the departing ship. It was odd that it was a King’s ship, but a thorough search of the harbor revealed no further clues, and she had to resign herself to the fact that her quarry had escaped. For the moment, at least.